We’d only just reported on the frozen and potentially lethal chunk lobbed at College Students in Gardner, Massachusetts, when yet another report of ice being slung from turbine blades appeared. This time it’s a truck and its driver that turned into a frightening form of renewable ‘targets’.

It is worth returning to that letter in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, criticising Booker’s global warming groupthink article:

SIR – I agree with Christopher Booker that people tend to adopt the views of their “group” without checking facts or using critical thinking.

Nevertheless, his article contains inaccuracies. A big one: that climate change theory was immediately hailed as a scientific consensus. In fact, it has been challenged, disagreed with, tested, refined, disagreed with some more and, after two decades, a sort of scientific consensus has emerged. However, Mr Booker uses the scientific uncertainty, and the one case of deliberate misuse of data, to try to argue against the facts.

Mr Booker seems to be saying that a small group of scientists have pulled off a hoax of massive proportions that flies in the face of the “real” data, which he doesn’t present. He says that the Intergovernmental…

TIM FLANNERY, former Climate Commissioner of Australia from 20011-2013 earned $180,000 per year for a three-day working week to make predictions and decisions that affected billions upon billions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money.

AFTER being rightly sacked by the Abbott government in 2013, Flannery began his own go-fund-me version of the Climate Commission, the Climate Council, which continues the propagandised rollout of catastrophic climate predictions and unreliable-energy pipe dreams.

NEVER far from the government teat, Flannery is regularly wheeled out by Australia’s government run media monolith their ABC, appearing as resident climate ‘expert’ whenever a catastrophic weather event hits the news cycle, or simply to inject a dose of hysteria into the conversation when climate alarm is waning.

“I think there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis. It’s whole primary production is in dire straits and the eastern states are only 30 years behind.”

We are “one of the most physically vulnerable people on the Earth,” and “southern Australia is going to be impacted very severely and very detrimentally by global climate change.” We are going to experience “conditions not seen in 40 million years.”

“Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain …

In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.”

Graph showing the number of severe and non-severe tropical cyclones from 1970-2017 which have occurred in the Australian region. Severe tropical cyclones are shown here as those with a minimum central pressure less than 970 hPa.

Urged us to invest in “green” geothermal power — pumping water on to hot rocks underground.

He claimed hot rocks in South Australia “potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run Australia’s economy for the best part of a century”, and “the technology to extract that energy … is relatively straightforward”.

The Rudd government gave $90 million for a test plant in SA’s Cooper Basin, but a well collapsed, the site flooded and the project was abandoned.

Australia’s east coast is no stranger to drought, but the dry spell that began in 1998 is different from anything that has gone before….The cause of the decline of rainfall on Australia’s east coast is thought to be a climate-change double whammy – the loss of winter rainfall and the prolongation of El Nino-like conditions.

The resulting water crisis here is potentially even more damaging than the one in the west … As of mid 2005 the situation remains critical… very little time to arrange alternative water sources such as large scale desalination plants.

$12 BILLION worth of desalination plants built in South Australia, Queensland, NSW and Victoria have all been mothballed without producing a drop of water. All were built in preference to much cheaper dams, because of green bans and because warming alarmists claimed the rains would not return.

FIVE desal plants have been built in Australia. Only Perth’s is used.

COSTS to run each mothballed deal plant are estimated at between $500,000 to $1,000,000 per day, every day until the contracts run out around 2030.

WILL anyone on the Q&A panel or from the supposed ‘bi-partisan’ audience question Flannery on any of his monumental climate prediction failures and brazen climate alarmism?

DON’T hold your breath!

*

FINAL word from the Leftist and global warming obsessed The Conversation on Flannery…

“How is it that Tim Flannery could have got it so spectacularly wrong? The most obvious factor could well be Flannery’s lack of background in a climate science. He is an academic, however his background is mammalogy – he studied the evolution of mammals.”

GLOBAL warming alarmists want to change us, they want to change our behaviour, our way of life, our values and preferences. They want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate or the environment. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. Therefore, what is in danger is freedom, not the climate.

FORMER head of Deutsche Bank, the ABC and ASX, Maurice Newman, writes a must read opinion piece in the The Australian providing further evidence that the “global warming movement is really the triumph of ideology over science”…

Hannam is often the ­canary in the coalmine (er, wind farm) when there is a sense that public belief in man-made global warming is flagging. With Europe in the grip of a much colder winter than predicted and with the ­abnormal chill spreading even to Africa, he did his best to hold the line.

Earlier this year, Climate Council councillor Will Steffen also climbed on board — for The Sydney Morning Herald of course. Extreme cold in Britain, Switzerland and Japan, a record-breaking cold snap in Canada and the US and an expansion of the East Antarctic ice sheet coincided with a ­Bureau of Meteorology tweet (later retracted) that January 7 had set a heat record for the ­Sydney Basin. Steffen told us these seemingly unrelated events were in fact linked. “Climate ­disruption” explained both. Whether fire or ice, we’re to blame. No ifs, no buts.

Now a warming Arctic provides the perfect opportunity for Hannam to divert attention from the latest deep freeze. He ominously warns: “Climate scientists are used to seeing the range of weather extremes stretched by global warming, but few episodes appear as remarkable as this week’s unusual heat over the Arctic.”

It’s true, warm air has made its way up to the high Arctic, driving temperatures up to 20C above ­average. But Anthony Watts, who runs a climate change website, puts things into perspective. He observes: “Warm moist air from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans has warmed the Arctic above the 80th parallel. It should be noted, however, that the Arctic Circle actually starts at 66 degrees north, meaning the record heat is over a much narrower area.”

Cato Institute atmospheric scientist Ryan Maue reviewed high Arctic temperature data going back to 1958 and says: “Data before the satellite era … has some problems, so it’s hard to say the current spike is for sure a record.” He says that if the baseline is 1973, when the polar-­orbiting satellites began recording the data, there is not much difference between today’s ice extent and then.

Indeed, we now have satellite confirmation that global air temperatures are back to the same level they were before the 2014-16 super El Nino event and, this January and February, the decline accelerated. Since 2015 satellites also have detected a fall in sea surface temperatures.

Solar expert Piers Corbyn, of British forecasting group Wea­therAction and famous for his successful wagers against the British Met Office forecasts, predicts Earth faces another mini ice age with potentially devastating consequences. He notes: “The frequency of sunspots is expected to rapidly decline … reaching a minimum between the years 2019 and 2020.” Indeed, the present decline in solar activity is faster than at any time in the past 9300 years, suggesting an end to the grand solar maximum.

Critics say while “it might be safe to go with (Corbyn’s) forecast for rain next Tuesday, it would be foolish to gamble the world can just go on burning all the coal and oil we want”. That’s the nub of it. The world has bet the shop on CO2 warming and the “science” must be defended at all costs.

But while spinning unfalsi­fiable “climate disruption” slogans may sway readers of The Sydney Morning Herald and resonate with believers in their centrally heated halls, those in the real world, witnessing hundreds of people dying of the cold and thousands more receiving emergency treatment, will consider they’ve been duped.

Not feeling duped are successive Australian governments that have become committed members of a green-left global warming movement promoted by the UN. On dubious scientific grounds they have agreed to accept meaningless, anti-growth, CO2 emission targets that enrich elites and burden the masses.

And, true to label, a Green Climate Fund supported by Australia and 42 mostly developed countries will redistribute $US100 billion ($128bn) annually to poorer nations as reparation for the unspecified environmental harm the West has allegedly caused them.

Big emitters such as China, India and Russia are conspicuously absent.

Policing Australia’s targets and helping to spread confirmatory propaganda is a network of international and local bureaucracies. The world’s academies and meteorological organisations, frequently found to be unreliable and biased, keep the faith alive. They reject debate and starve nonconforming researchers of funds and information. Students are indoctrinated with unproven climate-change theories that an unquestioning media gladly ­reinforces. Meanwhile, the country ingenuously surrenders its competitive advantage by refusing to embrace its rich endowment of affordable baseload energy. This it happily exports while lining the pockets of renewable energy rent-seekers with generous taxpayer subsidies.

Should the world enter a per­iod of global cooling, we should ­expect concerted denial. Too many livelihoods, too many reputations and too much ideology ­depend on the CO2 narrative. Having ceded sovereignty over our economies’ commanding heights to unelected bureaucrats in Geneva, the West (Donald Trump excluded) repeatedly turns to expensive vanity projects to paper over this folly. If the iceman cometh, there can be no quick fix. Yet we know it takes twice as much energy to heat a home than to cool one. So pity the poor and infirm who respected medical journal The Lancet says are 20 times likelier to die from cold than heat.

While even to mention a mini ice age risks scorn and derision, recent research has shown a close correlation between solar activity and climate on Earth. That possibility alone should cause shivers. But it will take time and experience before we accept the global warming movement is really the triumph of ideology over science. Until then we will continue to commit life’s cardinal sin of putting too many eggs into one questionable basket.

EXCELLENT piece by our friend and environmental scientist Vijay Jayaraj on the recent mass hysteria over the supposed “hottest day evah” in the Arctic.

Vijay’s piece, featured in Town Hall, demonstrates how the Climate Crisis Industry will latch on to any daily (hot) weather event in order to push their CAGW agenda yelling “GLOBAL WARMING” without any consideration for historical reference or indeed common sense…

“Those who count the Arctic warmth as evidence for global warming should count the Eurasian [cold] as evidence for global cooling”

This week, social media and mainstream media were abuzz with news about the record Arctic heat and how we humans are destroying our planet through climate change.

While we brace for a barrage of climate doomsday news, here is the actual reality of climatic conditions at the Arctic and reasons why we are not in imminent danger.

On 26 February, temperatures in some regions of the Arctic hovered around the freezing point (zero degree Celsius)—a record high for this time of year in the satellite era temperature readings (which began in the late 1970s).

But the current rise in Arctic temperature is due not to changes in global average temperature but to changes in regional weather patterns. Changes in the weather system across the Scandinavian region are pushing very warm, moisture-laden Atlantic air into the Arctic and very cold Arctic air into Northern Eurasia, leading much of Europe into a deep freeze this week.

(Those who count the Arctic warmth as evidence for global warming should count the Eurasian code [cold] as evidence for global cooling.)

The same has been prevalent over North America this week, resulting in a colder than normal winter in some parts while temperatures soar towards the east coast.

To understand the sudden peak in arctic temperatures, it is critical to analyze two key elements associated with the Arctic climate: 1. past temperature trends, and 2. the historic variations of the sea ice cover in the Arctic.

Temperature records for the Arctic reveal that the current rise in temperature is not unusual.

The weighted Arctic (70–90oN) monthly surface air temperature anomalies (from HadCRUT4) show that average surface temperatures in the Arctic have not increased significantly since the 1930s.

Long-term (1880–2018) Arctic surface annual air temperature series from Nuuk, Greenland, show that the high temperatures in the recent years are not significantly higher than the previous 14 decades.

Climate alarmists argue that these high temperatures lead to extreme reduction in sea ice levels and upset the eco-system of the planet.

However, sea ice variations reveal a similar pattern to that of temperature—there has been no extreme reduction of sea ice in recent decades.

The latest studies on Arctic sea ice indicate that sea ice cover during the 20th century did not depart significantly from the record sea ice levels during the Little Ice Age (1600–1700 AD).

And understandably, the sea ice cover was at its 2000-year low during the Medieval Warm Period (1000-1200 AD) and during the Roman Warm Period (around 0 AD).

If one were to consider longer temperature data series, such as the entire Holocene (the warm climatic era that constitutes the last 11,700 years approximately), we have no reason to panic about sea ice cover.

Sea ice cover in the 20th century was at its highest ever (excluding the Little Ice Age of 16thcentury) in the last 11,000 years.

Solar activity, and not carbon dioxide, was found to be the main reason for changes in the historical sea ice variations.

The current sea ice loss is not extraordinary by any means, and the Arctic ecosystem survived through much lower ice cover extent in the past 2000 years.

Lying about sea ice and temperatures is not new for the climate alarmists, and their hypocrisy will surely reach new heights this spring.

“The role of the lowest solar cycle for at least a century is mostly ignored by believers in man-made global warming. There are signs of climate change, but not necessarily the kind they expect.” – Rog Tallbloke

Here is this week’s latest in Climate Stupid:

Let’s “solve” climate change by halting economic growth, argues a paper from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, published in Nature Climate Change.

Texas Tech professor Katharine Hayhoe tells a summit in Edmonton, Canada that climate change is “the greatest humanitarian crisis of our times”; confides how shocked she was on discovering, six months into her marriage, that her husband did not believe in global warming. “You have somebody you respect and you also love and you also want to stay married. I said well, ‘Let’s talk about it.’” Apparently it took two years to convince him.

Activists at Cambridge University warn of “large scale disruption” if the university’s £6.3 billion endowment fund ignores their demands that it should divest itself of its fossil fuel investment holdings.

BACK in my hometown of Melbourne, it is abundantly clear and the evidence “unequivocal” that fossil fuels have devastated this once beautiful city. The “carbon pollution” and rampant environmental devastation is visible in everything you see, smell and touch.

CAPITALISM and the advent of cheap, abundant and reliable fossil fuel power has created a city of filth, poverty and squalor. It must be stopped.

DRACONIAN climate policy and a state of totalitarianism is the only way to convert Melbourne back into a “sustainable”, “smart city” of tranquil caves and caverns once again.

ENDING capitalism and yielding to the UN’s multi-trillion dollar Paris climate con deal is the only way Melbourne will ever become clean and green again.

IN the meantime, Victoria’s Premier, Chairman Dan Andrews’ plan to make ‘energy’ 40% renewable unreliable by 2025 is guaranteed to put downward pressure on already skyrocketing power prices and ensure jobs and industry remain in Victoria…